Internal combustion engines for heavy duty vehicular and non-vehicular applications, such as trucks, tractors, buses, well-drilling machines, boring machines, portable pumping units, emergency power generators, and the like, can generate significant amounts of heat and produce exhaust gases that are hotter than the exhaust gases produced by non-commercial cars and trucks. Accordingly, the exhaust piping joints for the exhaust manifolds, the turbocharger, the EGR system, and the catalytic converter of such engines can become exceedingly hot. Unfortunately, exhaust piping gaskets made from the more-common stainless steel alloys, which are generally suitable for the lower exhaust gas temperatures found in non-commercial cars and trucks, will often experience severe oxidation corrosion leading to the deterioration or flaking of their outer surfaces in the heavy duty, high temperature applications. As a result, specialized high temperature gaskets formed from expensive and exotic metal alloys, such as the class of austenitic nickel-chromium-based superalloys produced and sold under the Iconel™ brand of materials, may be required.
Consequently, a need exists for an effective treatment or coating that could be applied to lower cost gasket substrates made from the more-common stainless steels, and that would allow the gaskets to perform effectively and without substantial oxidation corrosion or deterioration or flaking of their outer surfaces in high temperature applications, such as the heavy duty applications described above. It is toward such a high temperature coating or treatment that the present disclosure is directed.